Amazon and Barnes &Noble (Research Paper Sample)

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DATE \@ "d MMMM yyyy" 18 February 2013:
An Objective Analysis on Amazon`s Competitive Advantage of Barnes and Noble
1) Find the most recent (year 2012) data for each company and create a table as the above 2002 table.
Below is a table showing both Amazon`s and Barnes & Noble`s state of affairs as per the year 2012. Amazon has for years maintained a competitive advantage over Barnes & Noble.



Market value

113.63 billion

904.80 million

Number of employees

88,000

30,000

Revenue

51.06 billion

7.129 billion

Annual net income

-39 million

-68.687 million

Source: Yahoo! Finance
2) Using resource-based view of competitive advantage concept, list three types of resources that help Amazon to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. For each resource, briefly explain its values and why it is hard to imitate.
Core competencies should be distinguished from other general competencies. These are the main strengths covering skills and capabilities that shall give a business an advantage in any business environment over its competitors. Since these competencies are tied to what experiences customers seek, it is very difficult for the competitors to imitate them(Mohr, Sengupta, and Slater 49). For amazon, luckily, they had quite a number over Barnes & Noble. We will look at three.
First...